Damon Hill: Overcoming loss, achieving success, and finding one's identity

**Peter Attia** (0:04)
Hey everyone, welcome to The Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top-performing individuals in the world. And this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peterattiamd.com.
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast, and why instead we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better.
I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and improve the quality of their lives.
Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy, and even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those, and the feedback has mirrored this. So, all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this?
As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads, but after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now, the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me if I'm telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell you about it.
Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time, and that is to create a subscriber support model for my audience.
This keeps my relationship with you both simple and honest.
If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member and support us at whatever level works for you. In exchange, you'll get the benefits above and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give.
So for example, members will receive full access to the exclusive show notes, including other things that we plan to build upon, such as the downloadable transcripts for each episode. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular Ask Me Anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal and also getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited about, I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said, we're not taking ad dollars from anyone, but instead what I'd like to do is work with companies who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free and have them pass savings on to you. Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in, one, the podcast itself, and two, the additional content exclusive for members to support us at a level that makes sense for you. I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. My guest this week is Damon Hill. Damon is the 1996 Formula 1 World Champion. And even by the standards of Formula 1 World Champions, Damon's career was incredibly interesting and took place during a brief but intense tumultuous period in Formula 1 He was Ayrton Senna's teammate during the tragic year in which Senna's life was lost. And he went on to have legendary battles with Michael Schumacher. Now you might be thinking, if you're not a Formula 1 fan or a racing fan, why would you listen to this episode? Well, I want to address that up front and say that this is really not an episode about driving. Basically, the driving, the racing, all of that is really a substrate or a vehicle through which we discuss the journey of Damon's life, which was given a tragic jolt when he was 15 years old. And his father, the legendary Graham Hill, two-time Formula 1 World Champion, died in a plane crash that he was flying. And I think it becomes very clear when you read Damon's incredible autobiography, Watching the Wheels, which I can't recommend highly enough, how much of an impact that had on Damon. Something that to this day, it's clear, has still shaped and forged so much of who he is. He's very open in this biography about his depression. And it was when I read his book for the first time about a year ago that I realized I just had to interview Damon. And this interview did not disappoint. He was incredibly open, incredibly forthright about the struggles that he has had, the inadequacies that he has felt, and the journey that he's been on to basically break the cycle that he felt he would have passed on to his kids had he not figured this out. Of course, we do talk quite a bit about racing and we go into great detail. And I think that in many ways, Damon's account of what happened that tragic day on May 1st, 1994, when Ayrton Senna died at Imola, is probably the best account you will ever read. In fact, I make the point to Damon that it's really his book and his account of it that probably changed my mind about the events of that day. I could go on much longer about what we discuss in this episode, but I think this is one of those ones where you just have to sort of take my word for it and listen to it. Again, if you're not a racing fan, I don't think it matters. This is really not a racing story. It's a human story that's cloaked in a racing story. And of course, if you have any interest in motorsport, especially F1, I think the nuance and detail of his career will be illuminating. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Damon Hill.